Secrets Better Left Hidden
by starwars05
Summary: Honor is on a short break after the battle of manticore with the solarian fleet that had attacked them. Forced to cope with some down time she decides to visit her parents who are unavailable for several reasons. Nimitz then decides to show her something now that they have time, something awoken by the yawata strike, something that may have been better off hidden.
1. Boredom

(My first attempt at a Halo/Honorverse crossover fanfiction, though not my first fanfic ever) (Damn forgot about disclaimer Halo is owned by bungie and the honorverse by it's author david weber)

Regular-whether thinking or talking, it should be obvious which is which

_Sign- for those who don't know treecats while sentient cannot talk like us so they use sign language though it should also be obvious this is just in case._

Honor was bored she had been forced to take some leave time after the battle in the Manticore home system with the Solarian league fleet. Which usually would have meant she was at her husband's home in white haven, except that he had the bad fortune to be called away for a series of meetings with the admiralty board, so now she was on sphinx visiting her parents at their home, and she was bored. Her father had been called away by an emergency at the hospital and her mother had been gone with her friends before she got here, which was understandable since she hadn't said she was coming here, she had wanted to surprise them.

Nimitz's bleek of amusement from his perch on the porch railing jolted her out of her thoughts as he felt the source of her feelings. "Oh and I suppose you have something better we could be doing?" Honor asked mildly annoyed with the treecat.

"_Yes" _he signed to her

"Oh?"

With another bleek of amusement Nimitz jumped off the porch railing where he had been sunbathing and started off towards the forest, flicking his tail at her to indicate she should follow.

The path Nimitz was taking could barely be called that it was obvious that only rarely did anything other than an animal use it.

"Oy, stinker where are we going?" Honor asked slightly exasperated at this point having been following the treecat for the better part of an hour.

He stops on a branch not too far ahead of her _"Something you need to see"_ he signed clearly

"Really, what?"

"_A secret, that is now to be revealed."_

"Why now?"

"_A decision was made"_

"A decision?" "By whom?" she asked for clarification becoming slightly frustrated at this point.

"_All will be made clear there, please trust me"_ and he took off again slightly faster this time while radiating calm to her.

Grumbling slightly honor followed. After another hour or so of travel, they emerged in large gully of sorts that had obviously been here for a while probably formed a couple of hundred years ago by an earthquake or something like that. Except that despite its aged appearance something was bugging honor, she couldn't quite put it into words but there was something off about the gully but Nimitz was still going so she didn't stop to think about it too long and filed the thought away for later contemplation.

It was another 10-15 minutes of walking through the gully, it had become a small canyon really at this point, before Nimitz stopped at the foot of the cliff that the canyon ended at.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?" Honor asked slightly incredulously. As cliffs went this one wasn't all that impressive only between approx. 100-200 meters high though it was nearly sheer for its entire length.

There was another bleek of amusement from the treecat. _"No, not exactly" _He signed

"What I want to show you is here" He signed then pointed at a part of the cliff that looked slightly recessed compared to the rest of it. She walked up to it and put her hand to it. Immediately she realized why the gully and cliff had looked so odd to her, they were artificial. The "cliff" was obviously a spaceship, or some other kind of artificial construct.

"This is…" she stuttered her surprise total.

"_It was a secret"_

"Why?"

"_They wished to be left alone"_

"Who are they, Nimitz?" "I'm not going into this completely unknowing."

Nimitz looked at her and nodded, he leapt onto her shoulder and instead of signing anything let her feel what he meant instead and she felt that they would not hurt her or Nimitz; that they just wanted to talk.

"Hmmmff" she grumbled, "Fine I will meet them but if this goes badly I'm blaming you.

Nimitz just let her feel his smug amusement. With that she pressed into the recess and a door opened allowing her access to the vessel.

With some trepidation she entered the interior was not very well lit, probably running off of whatever emergency power systems were left. As she ventured deeper into the ship, it became obvious that was exactly what it was, all the doors off the corridor she was currently traveling through were closed and sealed. She stopped at one of them to try to open it but the console to the side did not respond and there were no obvious handles or other manual overrides so she continued on till she reached the end of the corridor. It ended with a door bearing an insignia on it, one that had not been seen for the better part of a thousand years. Upon the door displayed proudly was an engraving of earth held within the talons of an eagle with the letter U.N.S.C. proudly displayed below. Before she could think of the consequences of this the door slid open.

(Muahahaha a cliffhanger, this shit is like crack for authors lol. For those not familiar with the honorverse I will be writing a techno comparison and a timeline eventually of course. and as it is a fanfic, what's more a crossover fanfic liberties will be taken with both verses'. Have fun, hope people enjoy this. Though it is kinda short don't expect many chapters to be longer also I am kinda lazy so except for the first couple of chapters which I already have written out updating will probably kinda slow though I will update this has been kickin around my head for a long time now.)


	2. Wake Up

(I think I'm going to alternate perspectives at least until one catches up with the other, oh and usual disclaimer Halo belongs to Bungie and the Honorverse to Mr. David Weber)

…ief wake up …. ake up … wake up … Chief!

He woke with a start recognizing the voice that had been calling him as Cortana's as he came out of cryo sleep.

"What's wrong?" He asked his voice hoarse from being freshly woken out of cryo and what felt like disuse.

"What no hello, how are you Cortana?" the AI asked sounding slightly miffed "You nearly gave me a heart attack there chief, that is if I could have one." Her tone shifting to teasing as she continued

There was a brief pause as the chief got his head together and brought himself up to speed. "Sorry Cortana, nice to see you too" He said smiling faintly behind his visor.

"Glad to see there is still some measure of manners left in you" Cortana teased as her avatar smirked at him. "Sorry if I was a bit snippy it's been a while since I had anything besides my own thoughts for company."

"It's alright cortana, but why did you wake me, is there a rescue party incoming?" the chief asks as he works the kinks from his body from apparently being in cryo for quite a while.

She looked slightly crestfallen "No chief, there is no rescue party however our half of the dawn is on a collision course with a planet; preliminary scans, with what sensors are left on the dawn, have shown that it is capable of supporting life but I cannot say more than that right now but I am going to try to land the dawn it would be better if the dawn were stationary, relatively at least, it will be easier to find this way."

"I see, what are the odds of a successful landing then?"

"Depending, of course, on the exact gravity of the planet, what angle we come down on and how much abuse the engines and superstructure can handle. My simulations show anywhere from 8 to 80 percent."

"Hmm better than our usual odds, I'll give you that." The chief said with a slight chuckle.

With a smile cortana replies, "Yep now how do you want to do this?"

"There are a three remaining, functional, life pods and even a pelican or you can gamble on being able to land the dawn, I would recommend loading the pelican and taking it to the surface I can leave an automated program to bring the dawn in."

"Then we'll go with that, what do we have left for supplies?"

"Because of the damage from both the battle over the ark and being cut in half I don't have a full inventory but there is a secondary armory on the floor below us and supplies within what is left of the hangar, also there are some odd energy readings coming from the starboard cryo bay."

"Then we'll have to check those out, is that everything?"

"Yep, well except that we've only got 3 hours till atmospheric re-entry, pull me chief." She stated with a bit of her customary snark.

As the chief leaned down to pull her chip he could have sworn that right before cortana looked nervous though the moment was so brief he dismissed it and the thought to bring her up again and ask her was immediately squelched, if there was something wrong she would have told him.

These were his thoughts as he put cortana's chip into the slot at the back of his helmet connecting her to his neural implants an action that would forever change both the Spartan and the AI.

(Finished Halo 4 NOOO, Bungie why!?, finish halo 4, curl up, try not to cry, cry a lot)

(Constructive criticism welcome and flamers BRING IT ON! lol if I miss anything blatant don't be afraid to call me on it though will fix so long as it's not someone just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking)(also anybody else think these are really short? was thinking about it even with my notes is short jeez ah well there isn't alot to describe right now may get better later, anyway good day ya'll lol)


	3. Tech Stuff

(Not liking bungie, sry 343 apparently lol anyway, so much right now though lol, anybody else think the new bioshock is awesome and messed up as hell finished it and was like WOAH! WHAT?) Standard disclaimer Halo owned by 343 and Honorverse by Mr. David Weber yadayadayada seriously though if I did own these would I be here?

Well might as well get the technobabble out of the way. I will start with the honorverse mainly because of the time gap I put it at for the haloverse I'm going to need to be creative there. (lol)

So… the honorverse, ship tactics have sort of devolved where most battles are fought with light ships while the heavy ships are only seen in absolutely critical battles, or at least it had until certain technical advances had been made, but for I will get to them later. It's kind of like 1800's ship tactics where the ships line up broadside to broadside and shoot at each other except with much larger ranges and they don't have to worry so much about wind and wave. (obviously)

So, I am going to start with weapons because I understand them better, main weapons are impeller drive missiles' massing in at between 15 and 80 tons and up to 21meters long, weight is decided by both warhead and ship designation, smaller ships use smaller missiles. Range is on average approx. 10 million kilometers depending on speed at launch. I will be using gravs as standard to make it easier to write a standard grav. is approx. 9.9m/s2 do the math yourself I am not. The missiles are capable of up to 46000 gravities of accel per minute for 3 minutes giving them an effective range in that situation before drive burnout of approx. (goddamnit lol) 6 million kilometers. Get it? Got it? No? Too bad lol look it up on the honorverse wiki, where do you think I got my numbers? Traditional warhead is called a laser head, it is a standoff weapon with an effective range of 15000 km and maximum range of 25000 km, exact yield varies between missile sizes obviously, anyway the warhead uses an on average megaton level nuke in conjunction with a series of grav lenses to make up to 18 concentrated gammar-ray lasers which with a yield somewhere in the gigawatt range. Secondary weapons are a number of lasers both regular infrared and gamma ray also capable of multi gigawatt yield, though the grasers are more powerful, again exact amounts vary between star nations and ship classes, these have an average range of two to four hundred thousand kilometers. Though they also use nuclear warheads in the multi megaton range they are only used for warning shots or weapons of last resort because of advances in point defence tech that made getting a weapon into physical contact with a warship nearly impossible.

A ships passive defenses rely primarily on what are called sidewalls, while not a true shield system it does attenuate, effectively bend, lasers and will, mostly stop light physical munitions, and secondary defences are the ships armor of course. The sidewalls are based off of their drive system which means it is gravity based and can be overcome, it does not stop hostile munitions so much as it deflects them. So why doesn't anybody use physical projectiles anymore? The answer is range, it is hard to hit a maneuvering target the size of a starship in a solar system, so something that can maneuver as well is preferred. For ground support they still do use KEW or kinetic energy weapons which are in essence pretty much scaled down MACs. (easiest way to explain it I think)There are also drones available on larger ship classes which are in effect a small towed platform that emits all the same signals as a warship, though weaker, the goal is to make the drone look like an all up warship that is using its ECM (electronic counter measure) suite to make the missiles own sensors and enemy warship sensors lose lock.

Primary active defences are counter missiles and laser point defences, exact amount of each depends on ship size, of course. Secondary defences are their EW (electronic warfare and ECM suites. The first line of active defense against missile fire was the counter-missile. Counter-missiles were used to intercept incoming missiles at ranges of one to four million kilometers. Counter-missiles typically had no warheads; they merely attempted to overlap their over-powered, out-sized impeller wedges with the wedges of the attacking missiles. The mutual destruction, as the gravitic stress vaporized the nodes of both missiles, was the reason counter-missiles used their impeller wedges as their primary missile-killing weapon; they are on average a little more than 2 metres long and weigh12.5 tons. There are usually around 1.5 times as many counter missile tubes on a warship as there are regular missile tubes though because of their smaller size counter missile drives, while stronger last a little less than half of a normal missiles and the sensors on one are less efficient. The last line is of course the PD (point defence) laser and the EW and ECM suites which work together to attempt to lure the attacking missiles off course by breaking their lock or making them detonate prematurely. Either with a successful laser hit or decoy use.

Alright on to the ships, there are 6 main ship classes, Destroyer, Cruiser (Light), Cruiser (Armored), Battle Cruiser, Dreadnought and Super Dreadnought. There are of course others but I am going to focus on these ones for now as they are the main ones you may see.

Destroyers (often abbreviated as DD) are the smallest warships employed by most navies and perform such duties as picketing, escorting, reconnaissance, commerce protection, and commerce raiding. Tasked with similar duties to their larger counterpart, the light cruiser, destroyers nonetheless carried weaker broadside armaments. Larger than frigates, destroyers commonly ranged in size from sixty-five to eighty thousand tons. (Frigates are not currently produced by any modern navy)

Light cruisers (often abbreviated to CL for "Cruiser, Light") served a role similar to their smaller consort, the destroyer, but with heavier armaments (the distinguising feature between a heavy destroyer and a small light cruiser was the cruiser's graser broadside mount or mounts) and better endurance. They were primarily used for reconnaissance, commerce raiding, and commerce protection with an average tonnage of ninety to one hundred fifty thousand tons.

Heavy cruisers (often abbreviated to CA for "Cruiser, Armored") were a class of medium combatants. They were designed for long-term independent action as a system picket, a heavy commerce protection unit and as a screening unit for capital ships. Heavy cruiser mass ranged between 160 and 350 thousand tons.

Battlecruisers are designed to straddle the line between medium combatants and heavier combatants, being both fast and well armed and armored. (Relatively) Their design features some internal compartmentalization and redundancy to help protect against battle damage, but not as much as ships of the wall. Battlecruisers' roles centered primarily on raiding and serving as a heavy screening unit for other capital ships as they are fast enough to run from anything big enough to kill them and strong enough to kill anything capable of catching them. Battlecruisers are ideal for commerce raiding since it compels the enemy to deploy a disproportionate number of battlecruisers to defend against the raids. Similarly, BCs were used in raiding a system since their speed allowed them to run away from any ship larger than a BC. Battlecruisers also serve as the heavy combat element and flagship for light task groups.\

Dreadnoughts, along with superdreadnoughts are classified as ships of the wall, ranging in size from five to six point five million tons. They are the lightest class of Ships of the Wall as they are called.

The superdreadnought (SD) was a type of warship employed by most major space forces of the Post Diaspora era. They were the largest warships to be built by humans as of the 20th Century PD, with tonnage ranging between seven and nine million tons.

Alright now everyone is probably curious as to how these ships move.

The impeller drive creates a pair of stressed gravity bands above and below a ship, known as the impeller wedge. In order to generate the wedge, a pair of impeller rings, located at the fore and aft ends of the ship, were required. The impeller rings contain 16 beta nodes. Around 1900 PD, the best acceleration for the impeller drive starship was well under 600 gravities. (The fastest current drive is the approx. 555 gravs that is allowed on a destroyer class warship with a 90% safety margin on their inertial compensator) The impeller drive is theoretically capable of nearly instantly accelerating a ship to .9c or 90 percent of the speed of light but no human can survive that kind of acceleration so ship speeds are limited to what their inertial compensator can handle safely normal safety margin is 80% of inertial compensator. The drive "tames" gravity waves to be used in normal space as a source of propulsion, but this does not explain how they got to other systems as it is still well below light speed this is where the warshawski sails comes in.

The sail was an adaptation of the usual gravitic node used in the impeller drive. It was an extended force field at the bow and stern of a starship perpendicular to the axis of the ship. It served as a way to control the forces which gravity waves produced in hyperspace and so greatly increase safety. It extended several hundred of kilometers and coruscated colorfully with the energies it handled. The sail was ineffective in normal space, but invaluable in hyperspace. Additionally, the sail could tap into the large energy fluxes in hyperspace and so provide enough power to essentially run the entire ship during its time in hyperspace. This reduced fuel expense considerably, making star transport, even of large masses, economically feasible. The gravitic nodes used to produce the sail had to be tuned to work with each other properly, and if sufficiently out of tune, a sail could fail catastrophically. Maintenance was important as the nodes and tuners used for sails endured considerable stress and had to be replaced, at high expense, relatively often compared to the life of a starship. The sails themselves were invisible to the naked eye, but the energies they handled not only could be seen, but most people thought them beautiful, in the way that planetary auroras are.

Hyperspace is taught as an extra dimension, sort of like Slipspace, and the activation of the warshawski sails allows the entrance into it although unlike slipspace it is possible to intercept ships in hyperspace. Hyperspace is divided into "bands" and the higher the band the faster the ship can travel the first such is named the alpha band, the highest band reached to date (safely) is the Iota band. (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta and Iota) Altogether it allows for a minimum of an apparent speed of 200 times light speed and a safe maximum of 2500 times, though the max only applys to ships with military grade particle shielding, anything less is relegated to a "mere" 2000 times light speed.

The impeller band and the Warshawski sails cannot be active at the same time, also if the impeller band is not active sidewalls cannot be generated, so fights in hyperspace are short and brutal.

Some say that intercepting a ship in hyperspace should be impossible and in theory that is true but the reliance upon grav waves for acceleration means that areas with higher than usual grav wave activity are more popular making it so there are established trade routes meaning all a warship or pirate needs to do is lie in wait on the band most traders go to on that particular section, usually in an area between waves where their intended prey must slow down and transition between the sails and the drive. (yes there is some small amount of piracy though why I do not know I guess people are people whatever generation they live in)

The main drawback to this type of FTL system is the hyper-limit that is present around all systems and changes depending on the size and age of the star. No ship can translate out of hyper within this limit so all ships must translate out of hyper on the edge of a system. Ships must also plot around stars as the gravity produced directly where a star is such that it would destroy anything traveling directly through that space through gravitic shearing.

The warshawski sails greatest advantage is its ability to utilize existing wormholes for near instantaneous transportation from one side to another. The largest such is the manticoran wormhole junction with 7 such termini, while the longest crosses a little more than 700 lightyears from the manticore junction in the manticore binary system to the lynx system in the Talbott cluster on the far side of the solarion league.

**Damn that is LONG lol and I haven't even touched personal arms, armor, or in atmosphere vehicles like armored vehicles and sting ships (atmospheric fighters) though I think anybody who reads this deserves a real chapter so I'm gonna post that next sry for the length and if you want more details check out the honorverse wiki, just google it eh? Lol **


	4. Meeting

**I'm going to bold my notes to distinguish them from the chapter now, but anyway how bout some opinions on the title anybody thinks it's kinda I dunno overdone or well I was going to call it pretentious lol. Also anybody else wonder if the actual authors for these stories ever check out what's being written on this site?**

**(Disclaimer I don't own any of these 343 is Halo and Mr. Weber for the Honorverse) Or do I? lol nope**

The door slid open, shocked honor hesitated for a moment until a voice, clearly feminine called out.

"Don't worry if we had meant you harm you never would have gotten this far."

"That's not very reassuring" Honor grumbled quiet enough she thought the other woman couldn't hear

"Now that's not very nice, surely your treecat, Nimitz, has conveyed that we mean no harm"

A different voice, male, this time "And if that's not enough I swear upon my honor that you will have safe passage."

Steeling herself to enter honor moved, stiffly at first, but gradually more naturally as Nimitz's presence and her own natural authority returned, the lights once more turned on as she approached and before long she reached a larger room what was obviously a gathering place, perhaps a secondary CIC of sorts judging by the computers that lined the room though none were active. Though whether this was because of age and disuse or disinclination to have them on she did not know. At the end of the room she finally saw the two that had called her hear and it was indeed a man and a woman, and though they were both still shrouded in shadow which suggested the lights didn't work and neither did the computers, she could see that both were above average height the woman standing only maybe a dozen centimeters above her own 189 but the man was enormous at least 2 meters and clad in a type of power armor she had never seen before. Coming to a halt in front of the pair she relaxed slightly as there were no weapons present so they were most likely not planning on killing her, at least not immediately her mind treacherously input.

"Glad you could make it Admiral Alexander/Harrington."

Honor started slightly as the woman spoke her full married name, so they did have some outside connections but that answered little.

She snorted slightly "It's not like I had much choice"

"Not true Admiral you could have turned back anytime."

"Truly?"

"Yes" This came from the man who had until then remained silent.

Despite herself she found herself tensing slightly as he shifted his stance just a little, scolding herself on the inside she says "Though you seem to have the advantage of me, you know who I am but you have not yet introduced yourselves."

This drew a giggle from the woman as she answered "Good point though I doubt the Chief will give you his true name right now, I am Cortana and the big lug next to me is the Master Chief S-117"

"A pleasure Ms. Cortans Mr…."

"Chief is fine ma'am" the man supplied rather gruffly

"Chief then." She finished, though it wasn't obvious, slight hesitantly before continuing "Now if you could tell me why you had Nimitz bring me here I would be quit grateful."

"Of course Honor, is it alright if I call you Honor, titles just get so stuffy." Honor nodded slightly stiffly not quite sure what to make of this woman, t his cortana, the chief was obviously military but she was a mystery. "Please follow us our tale is rather long and a good host would never leave their guests standing as she gestured towards a fairly well lit hallway. (**I couldn't think of a better adjective for something that wasn't bright but wasn't dim so sue me lol**) As she and the "Master Chief" strode away, honor followed closely not wanting to be left behind and finding herself, almost against her own will, curious as to who these two could be and why they had a crashed, she guessed, vessel on sphinx and how exactly it and by extension they had gotten here.

After about a minute they arrived in what was obviously a briefing area of some kind, though going from the lockers and weapons she could sort of half see in them, it had probably been meant for the marines stationed on the ship.

As they sat down the woman, cortana, spoke once more, "So honor you must be very curious as to why we are here and how we got here."

"Of course it is not often one sees a vessel from earth's first world government, more so this far away from earth." Some slight exasperation evident in her words

"Alright," cortana said moving a hand to cover a slight smile as she did "This is our story, but we would like you to hold any questions you may have until we are finished."

"Of course." Honor replied

**I gotta say what have you done to me fanfiction 2 chapters in less than a week, albeit one was the tech which was long not hard lol. I never realized how much there was until I started it OMG lol, so I think I'm just gonna have little blurbs at the bottom or top of chapters that have something new in them makes it much easier and not as much information at once to take in. **


	5. Change

**Had someone review on the ships and while he has a point wanted to get the basics out of the way first, start with the old stuff and I will introduce the new stuff a little bit at a time. I am going to try to name my chapters but I am not very good at naming stuff so the chapter name will probably come later than the posting of the chapter. Oh and anybody who knows Dresden Files and Hellsing, who thinks a fic with Dresden meeting Alucard is a good idea?**

Bright white light flared behind his eye as a pain like nothing he had experienced before erupted from the back of his head. Dimly he could hear someone yelling and only barely recognize that it was him. Though the sound was mixed with something, someone, else's as well. After what felt like an eternity his vision cleared and the pain faded to be replaced by a dull throbbing.

"Cortana," he barely managed to rasp out his throat hurt from the yelling (cause seriously the chief does not scream lol) "Cortana?" he managed to get out his voice a bit stronger this time.

"I'm alright chief, I think." She replied at first the sound of her voice reassured him until he realized what she said what did she mean she thinks. His brain scrambled at the possibilities is she alright did something damage his neural link or her chip during their escape from the ark and he didn't notice or had she decayed more than it had first seemed he never did ask how long he had been in cryo. Then something else occurred to him her voice it had not come from within his helmet speakers but from outside. He then looked around and saw her, it was undoubtedly cortana down to the blue purple of her hair, even her "skin" had a bit of a purple tint to it. Except that now she was clad in what looked like a slimmed down version of his own MJOLNIR armor, it showed off her figure instead of covering it up. (LOL couldn't help myself)

"Cortana?" He asked shock evident in his voice.

"It's me chief" The woman before him said though there was hesitancy within her voice too as if she couldn't really believe it. A silence settled over them while his brain tried to make sense of the event, which had somehow changed cortana from a cybernetic entity into whatever stood before him now.

The silence was broken by cortana who had grown annoyed with his silence, "Jeez chief after everything we've seen and done this is what renders you speechless" she said sarcasm evident in her voice.

This jolted him out of his thoughts and dragged a chuckle out of him she had a point after all. "Sorry cortana but even for me this is hardly something that one can be prepared for."

Looking slightly sheepish cortana crossed her arms and rubbed her elbow "It's alright chief sorry for snapping at you"

"No harm done but what happened how are you… like this" The chief gestured to her current form, he could see her taking in breath when she talked and a piece debris around her ricocheted off her arm when it struck her shocking both of them.

"I'm not sure chief it's probably a reaction to the flood spores from the first halo in combination with and chief… I went rampant and just pulled out of it not too long ago." The last bit came out in a bit of a rush.

"What do you mean… what happened, how long was I in that pod." The chief asked his voice steady but any who knew him would recognize some confusion in his voice.

Hesitatingly cortana explained, "We've been drifting for almost 150 years, 5 years after we were lost I reached the end of my operational life span and went rampant, I had one of the surviving robotic dollies physically disconnect me from the rest of the ship so I couldn't hurt you, it's been 5 years since I regained my sense of self and only 1 since I had the connections put back together."

As cortana explained the chief could only feel a mixture of horror and empathy for the entity before him had he known he would have done everything in his power to ease her suffering, a thought occurred to him then.

"You said something about the flood spores in me what did you mean by that?"

"Do you remember in the first halo when one of the flood infection spores had almost gotten you, in the library?" (I don't remember exactly help me out here someone lol)

"Of course"

"Well… in your blood tests there were shown to be some of the flood spores, though they were inactive either dead or somehow rendered inert we did not know, so they might have done something when you connected my chip to your neural implant in conjunction with the changes in my code that the rampancy caused" (yah that's what I'm going with cause I got nothing else lol, at least it's original, I think) This all came out rather rapidly and unsure it was unlike her but that was to be expected really this kind of thing had never happened before.

During her explanation the chief had moved closer, still almost unable to believe his eyes he reached a hand towards her and grasped her hand, cortana gasped slightly in shock at the physical contact.

"Whatever it is you are alright aren't you?"

Blushing slightly her cheeks turned a more red purple, "Y..yes as far as I can tell though I don't know if I will be able to still interface with the ships system or your armour anymore."

"Then it's fine, we can figure out what happened later, right now we need to land the ship." The chief said firmly, releasing cortanas hand. "For now see if you can interface with the ships systems and check how much time is left my HUD seems to have shorted out and needs to reboot."

"Alright, but no promises" Cortana said much more sure of herself, her eyes closed and he could tell she was concentrating before a look of excitement overcame her. "Yes! I've got it" Her face fell, "I had it…ah got it again I just need to concentrate, now… damn we've only got an hour left till we enter the planet's atmosphere, more detail is apparent though, the planet is indeed capable of supporting human life though I am not detecting any human life signs and the planets density suggests gravity slightly higher than earths, about 1.3 or 1.4 earth gravities."

"Do we have enough time to check the cryo bay and get all the supplies on the escape pods and pelican?"

"Not quite, if we go to check the cryo bay and there is something important there, we won't have time to get the pelican or the pods filled"

"What do you think of our chances of riding the ship down to the planet's surface?'

"Not as good as I would like but better than our average," Cortana said some of her usual high spirits showing again.

"Then we better get going" The chief stated firmly, before striding out of the bay they had been in, with a gesture for cortana to follow him. It was a race against time as usual, but now he was no longer alone.

* * *

Treecats: Natives of the planet sphinx and scoring higher than dolphins or monkeys on any intelligence scale, it was hotly debated as to whether or not these animals were truly sentient or not. Although recent breakthroughs, including the teaching of sign language to the cats has shown that they are indeed truly sentient, the smallest recorded species to be granted that status. While they look much like a terrestrial cat they average 9 kilos in weight and 60 centimeters long, their tail usually adds up to another 30 centimeters and are prehensile. They have 3 sets of limbs their "feet" mid hand like limbs similar to a monkeys and true hands that function in much the same way ours do. The treecats are also Telempaths, effectively telepathic, and communicate amongst themselves exclusively as such except in special cases. E.g. In Nimitz 'case he suffered a bad injury when he tried to protect honor when she was captured by the People's Republic of Haven, this damaged his ability to communicate with the other cats and as such he and his mate, Samantha, were the first to learn the sign language. Due to their telempathic nature all cats learn something when one does, so long as they are close enough to "share" thoughts.

**Finally lol finished had some trouble writing this one and went a very different direction than I had originally planned. That and every time I went to write cortana's appearance my brain kept spitting out an image of her avatar just regular human sized and more *ahem* detail lol. On an unrelated note I think I'm going to be writing a lemon of sorts later :P Also treecats cool no? I think this idea is one of the best I've ever heard of for a sentient alien, cause that is what the treecats are.**


	6. Timeline Part 1

**I was torn on exactly where to start the timeline because I was unsure how exactly I wanted to combine the two verses. On other news Dead Space does anybody else play these games are scared by them but keep coming back for more? It's crazy I know but I just can't stop lol.'**

2160-2300 - The Beginning

2160-2170 – The Jovian Moons Campaigns, The Rainforest Wars, The creation of the UNSC and the establishment of peace and the UEG

2291 – The creation of the Shaw-Fujikawa Trans-Light Engine allows for FTL travel and the colonisation of other worlds.

2300-2525 – The Rise and Fall

2310 – The first extra solar colonization efforts are launched

2321 – Project Orion is launched, later deemed a failure.

2362 – Becomes known as the odyssey as more than 200 worlds are colonized by humanity.

2468 – Founding of the colony Harvest

2473 – The colony ship Spirit of Fire is commissioned

2490 – Repurposing of the colony Reach it becomes the primary ship hub for the UNSC

2491 – Project Orion is restarted as the Spartan II project

2494 – The first large scale insurrectionist activities are observed

2517 – The Spartan II projects begin

2525 – Harvest long range radar makes contact with an unknown object all contact with the colony is lost shortly thereafter

2525-2552 - The Covenant War

2525 – A battlegroup is sent to re-establish contact with harvest, only the destroyer Heracles returns telling about an alien ship that destroyed both of the other ships sent, the Vostok and the Arabia.

2531 – The battle of harvest Admiral Coles fleet clashes with the aliens over harvest and though it is declared a victory it cost's Cole 2/3rds of his fleet damaged or destroyed. After returning to earth he learns that a number of the outer colonies have been destroyed and that the enemies call themselves, The Covenant.

2531-2535 – The Outer Colony Massacres, over these four years despite everything the UNSC can do all of the outer colonies are destroyed. While the UNSC is able to hold it's own on the ground through the use of tactics and the Spartans, in space it's a completely different story where casualties run in as much as 4:1 in the covenants favor. As a last desperate gamble Cole leads his own flagship into the atmosphere of a brown dwarf, luring a covenant fleet after him with taunts and detonates approx. 100 nuclear warheads destroying the covenant fleet and, apparently, sacrificing himself. Also during this time the battle over Arcadia takes place and the Pheonix class refit colony ship UNSC Spirit of Fire is presumed lost with all hands, including its captain James Cutter, a renowned scientist Dr. Anders, the ships AI Serina and a renowned soldier, a Sgt. Forge.

2551 – The Fall of Reach, Reach was humanities last bastion in the stars, the primary naval base for the entirety of the UNSC Navy and boasting the largest most up to date construction yards it was considered a fortress in space. Until the covenant found it, in the space of 2 weeks and near never-ending warfare on the ground and in space and at the cost of approx. 200 warships, almost the entire remaining UNSCDF, they cost the covenant an almost equal amount in ships for once, approx. 200 of the 500 covenant ships that attacked were destroyed, but in the end it wasn't enough. The covenant ground forces managed to destroy the groundside generators for the ODP Cannons and without those cannons the UNSC fleet was unable to hold against the covenant fleet and Reach was lost. This also resulted in the deaths of almost all remaining Spartan Teams Except for Red, Grey, Black teams; S-042 Douglas, S-092 Jerome, S-130 Alice, S-006 Jai, S-111 Adriana. The Spartan numbers that make up Black team are unknown but it is supposed that there are 4 or 5 of them. Also Spartans 058-Linda and 087-Kelly were trapped with a number of Spartan III's, Chief Mendez and Catherine Halsey in the Shield world of Onyx after the Fall of Reach, how they got off reach is still classified top secret. While S-117, known commonly as the Master Chief went with the Pillar of Autumn and Cortana to the Alpha Halo resulting in the events of Alpha Halo including the destruction of the Halo installation and the release of the Flood. Ship losses for the UNSC are 10 destroyed for every one that managed to get away, exact numbers at this time were impossible to know.

2536-2552 - The Siege of the Inner Colonies, despite all that could be done and isolated victories, usually on the ground the inner colonies fall one by one as even if the UNSC ground forces can win the combat in space remains solidly in the Covenants favour.

2552- The Events Delta Halo, High Charity Occur, The Covenants Great Schism Begins resulting in the elites siding with humanity and the near extinction of the prophets as almost their entire population was contained on high charity which was overrun by the flood.

2553 – The End, the events of the Ark occur, the flood is destroyed completely, the Schism in the covenant is completed with each of the separate races forming their own governments, though the Jiralhanae or Brutes still follow the Prophets, or San'Shyuum, guidelines as well as a radical group of elites who call themselves the Storm Covenant and are still trying to destroy humanity. Though they are not the threat humanity once faced and with the Elites or Sangheili

2555-2600 New Beginning (I am completely ignoring halo 4 as it happened I might make reference to it later though, this is also where it splits from the canon, well further than I already have lol)

2555 – A formal peace treaty is signed between the UEG and the newly formed Sangheili Republics, the Unggoy Parliament and the Kig-Yar Confederacy, with the Arbiter and Lord Terrence Hood presiding.

2560 – Earth and Sanghelios are attacked simultaneously by the Storm Covenant, the rebuilt ODP's around earth and the Home Fleet is able to destroy the attackers with the help of the new construction and refit ships that had benefited from the addition of shield generators, more powerful reactors, more efficient coolant and the new plasma torpedoes based off of the experiment performed by cortana in the Eridanus II system (first strike when she uses the MAC's magnetic coils in conjunction with the covenants existing plasma torpedo launcher to fire a stronger version of the covenants plasma torpedos)

The attack on sanghelios also fails but destroys a large portion of the systems infrastructure and the remaining Sangheili fleet resulting in the former covenant species, which were still relearning how to do many things for themselves, withdrawing from human space. The storm covenant are thought to be almost completely destroyed at this point as all of their ships had been involved in the attacks and 95% were destroyed or rendered useless.

2563 – Evidence comes to light from searching damaged storm covenant ship databanks suggesting ONI's involvement in supplying the storm covenant ONI of course denies it. Admiral Parangosky retires her protégé Captain Serin Osman is promoted to Admiral and takes over ONI operations.

2565 – An "unknown" leak in ONI airs several "dirty secrets" including ONI's involvement with the storm covenant and the origins of the Spartan II's and III's, public opinion is divided though an official investigation into ONI results in the court martial of more than a few of its more senior members and a restructuring of the information organization.

2570 – Lord Terrence Hood passes away his son Alexander Hood is appointed as the new UNSC Command Admiral a new rank originally made specifically for him in thanks for his tireless efforts, before, during and after the Battle of Earth. He is in effect supreme commander of all UNSC forces though he decides to have it classified as a "War only" measure and runs the UNSC with a council of Admirals, one for each section, BuWeaps or Bureau of Weapons, BuShips or Bureau of Shipbuilding, BuReasearch, BuPers or Bureau of Personnel and BuInt the new name for ONI.(haha I fixed ONI, lol kinda I didn't really like ONI so I changed it don't like? I don't care lol)

2580 – Contact is re-established with a few Inner colonies and a final headcount is made 135 worlds, including earth, managed to survive the war. Though much time will pass before humanity regains its former eminence

2590 – Another type of FTL engine called the Hyper Drive is invented by the civilian scientist and inventor Dr. Adriana Warshaski of earth. While generally faster than slipspace the hyper limit, the limit in which a hyper drive cannot go into or out around a star of the hyper drive, makes it untenable for the military to use though it is generally accepted by civilian craft as it is, generally, safer than a slipspace drive and easier to make.

2592 – Several dangers in using the hyper drive have been noted and include but are not limited to the inability to translate from the lowest level of hyper at a speed greater than .3c and the potential for gravitic waves that cause distortion in hyperspace to destroy the a ship if it is caught in the 'turbulence' as it is commonly known as.

2600-2700 – Unrest and Civil War

2610 – Increasingly repressive laws from earth and the open split of the UNSC from the UEG, the UNSC has effectively colonized several worlds all in their own right, due to disagreements between UNSC High Command and the UEG parliament.

2612 – BuInt in conjunction with BuShips produces a small fleet composed entirely of vessels equipped with the new hyper drive system. They deem it of some tactical value but the slipspace drive with its greater flexibility is kept as the primary drive for all UNSC warships though many are refitted with a hyper drive as back up.

2620 – Tensions continue rise as the governors from a number of colonies meet on earth for discussions with the earth parliament, topics include the, to some, disturbing silence coming from Covenant Space, and attempts to ease tensions between earth and it's colonies. These discussions do not go well and all of the representatives of their planets leave unsatisfied.

2640 – The UEG in secret creates a separate military centered around the new hyper drive, ostensibly this is to test the drive and its potential for military usage at the same time a separate army and marine corp is created. This does not sit well with the admirals of the UNSC command and a slight increase in the construction of warships and number of recruits is made.

2650 – The UEG creates a new intelligence system calling itself the UEIS or United Earth Information System.

2660 – With the threat of the covenant gone and UEG retaining control of many of the colonies economies, protests and riots begin to break out over many colony worlds that feel they are not getting the attention they deserve. To be fair many are not their funds being diverted to build the UEG's new military operations. They are put down brutally by UEG not UNSC ground forces.

2665 – The first true armed rebellion surfaces on several of the inner colonies simultaneously catching both BuInt and the UEIS by surprise they are quickly quelled by UEG forces again, though this time some UNSC troops are caught in the fighting, it is officially unknown which side killed the troopers who were on leave at the time, though some suspicion is placed on the UEG troops who were present.

2670 – True civil war erupts within human space as fully ¾'s of the colonies reveal fleets built in secret using the new hyper drive and some older model UNSC ships, most likely holdovers from the Insurrections. The UEG calls on the UNSC for support and are ignored, scout ships to the UNSC held worlds including the rebuilt world of reach find nothing the shipyards, cities and everything have been abandoned and disassembled in at least part all information is gone from the databases and important parts for the building of slipspace drives, which had transitioned to being only UNSC used and AI's which had decreased in usage as the need for more jobs for humans to bolster economies was paramount, both had been military secrets before the war and the destruction of so many planets and deaths had robbed the civilian markets of the ability to produce them.

2700 – For thirty years the separatists and the UEG fought, while the UEG was outnumbered they'd had longer to train their people and their ships were on average larger. In the end many nuclear strikes were made by both sides even on habitable planets the deciding factor was the invention of the Impeller Drive by a separatist scientist by the name of Dr. Spencer Reed. The drive was a "reactionless drive" that meant it did not rely on a fuel to create momentum and in combination with the inertial compensator allowed starships to travel faster and farther than ever before. In a last act of desperation during the last battles in the sol system the UEG used indiscriminate nuclear bombardment and suicide strikes against targets of opportunity. This only delayed the inevitable though and in the aftermath much of the Sol system had been damaged or destroyed.

* * *

The Grav lance and Energy Torpedos, these were the only ship tech left out of the original because i wasn't sure if i should mention them since they aren't used but i decided to and to add something else in exchange, 2 for 1 eh? lol. The grave lance is a concentrated vortex of gravity that is meant to cause a harmonic in an enemy ships sidewall shutting it down, unfortunately it is very short ranged and mass intensive currently, it has max range of only 100,000 km. Energy torpedos are small, relatively, mostly unguided balls of plasma that were supposed to be, in my slightly AU universe at least, a cheaper way to utilize plasma energy but they are too small and contain too little mass to punch through an enemy ships sidewall. As such both have been placed by the wayside.

**I ended up changing this one a lot more I was gonna make ONI the bad guy but decided against it in the end anyway what do y'all think? Whoops forgot the blurb first time around. OH should mention the honorverse don't got shield tech or better plasma because the UNSC didn't share so there lol.  
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	7. Timeline Part 2

**I decided to split the timeline as I felt it was a bit much all at once, much the same reason for the little blurbs for tech lol. I thought all this would be harder but I got really into it once I started now if only my computer chair was more comfortable lol.**

0 Post Diaspora – 2700 Common Era

0 PD - In a show of brotherhood the remaining planets worked together to rebuild the sol system, and signed a new constitution that made all planets equals and created the Solarian League.

10 PD - Despite the mystery remaining behind the disappearance of the UNSC new colonization efforts were already underway including the reclamation of the former UNSC worlds. These worlds were renamed by the new government, and the first before known as Reach was now Beowulf (muahaha lol).

96 PD – Multiple attempts to contact the former covenant species are unsuccessful and any ships that travelled into covenant space, as it comes to be known do not come back

110 PD – The Eridani Edict as it becomes known is legislated forbidding the use of WMD's on civilian population centres or in indiscriminate amounts.

124 PD – All further attempts to contact the former covenant species and the UNSC are abandoned and covenant space is labeled a no go zone. Various other factors including some very dangerous grave waves make the area unsuitable for Hyper Drive equipped ships anyway.

203 PD – The cure for cancer is discovered

305 PD - Safe long term cryo hibernation is perfected.

314 PD – Reverend Austin Grayson leads the church of humanity unchained to the yeltsin system.

478 PD – Cryogenics becomes widely available, most merchant ships before did not travel far from their point of origin just to the next star system or such but with the availability of cryogenics and the relative cheapness of a new forms of steel 'tramp' freighters that travelled between more widely spread systems experienced a resurgence.

560 PD – A new type of steel is synthesized 3/4's as strong as the Titanium A plate previously used and only a quarter again the weight, this new type is cheaper to make though making it the new go to metal for ship building.

683 PD – The first impeller drive for a missile is invented.

775 PD – The colony ship Jason leaves for the Manticore binary system.

802-822 PD – The laser head for missiles is invented allowing missiles a standoff range of up to 20000km, as stronger nuclear warheads are created as well as better focusing lenses the laser head becomes the primary weapon for all warships. This development was prompted by the development of PD (point defence) systems that made it much more difficult to get a traditional nuclear warhead close enough to damage a ship.

1273 PD – A descendent of Adriana Warshawski, Adrienne Warshawski invents the Warshawski Sail, as it comes to be known and a gravitic detection system allowing ships equipped with them to harness the power of grav waves allowing for faster than regular hyper drive FTL travel. (Not horribly original I know lol)

1309 PD – The first colonists arrive in the haven system.

1416 PD – The first settlers of the manticore system primary, Manticore A's first habitable planet, not so originally named manticore, make landfall.

1422 PD – The second habitable planet of the Manticores primary is settled it is named Sphinx

1435 PD – The third habitable planet of the manticore system, this one orbits the systems secondary star, is settled and named gryphon. It is renowned for the severity of its weather.

1447 PD – The first wormhole junction is discovered

1460 PD – The mesa system is settled by the Dettweiler consortium, later the consortium changes its name to Manpower Inc. they specialize in (ugh hate these people) genetic slavery, which is exactly what it sounds like, people genetically tailored for whatever is needed including sex slaves.

1500 PD – The last confirmed sighting of a UNSC ship is confirmed, all attempts to hail it result in failure and it disappears in what appeared to be a slipspace portal.(I don't like the wording of this one but cannot think of something better for the life of me)

1513 PD – Gustav Anderman founds the Andermani empire.

1519 PD – Treecats are discovered, the twelfth known sentient species.

1568 PD – The ninth amendment of the manticore is ratified giving the treecats the same rights as all sentient species.

1585 PD – The manticoran wormhole junction is discovered it contains a record breaking 6 transit points.

1700 PD – The Republic of Haven becomes the People's Republic of Haven, becoming a welfare based state.

1804 PD – The People's Republic becomes effectively bankrupt.

1845 PD – The Republic begins what will turn into a half-century of armed expansion.

1888 PD – The Republic annexes the trevors star system, which contains one of the manticoran junctions transit points.

1905 PD – The First havenite-manticoran war begins with the battles of Hancock station and Yeltsin Star, both are devastating victories for the RMN (Royal Manticoran Navy). At the same time a coup is staged by a Robert Pierre in the People's Republic, the navy is blamed and Pierre becomes chairman of the Committee of Public Safety the new ruling body for the People's Republic. The battles also show the first use of the new missile pod systems, these were used before but as missile ranges climbed and PD systems were advanced they were set aside as they could not have the onboard mass drivers ships used to 'throw' their missiles beyond their sidewalls before the missiles started their own impeller drives, an impeller activated within another impeller would cause a harmonic capable of destroying the ship, and as such were slower than ship launched missiles. The new pod systems did have a newly developed mass driver which meant they were no longer at a disadvantage to ship launched missiles.

1912 PD - The execution of Honor Harrington by hanging is publicly reported by Second Deputy Director of Public Information Leonard Boardman. Though this is, was proven false later as Honor escaped, blowing up the SSN (State Security Navy) Battlecruiser Tepes with Cordelia Ransom, a member of the committee onboard.

1913 PD - Battle of Cerberus - culminating point of the POWs and political prisoners escape from Havenite secret planetary prison Hades lead by, now admiral though she didn't know it at the time, Honor Harrington. (She was already promoted to Admiral within the Grayson navy for saving their system in the first and third battles of yeltsin star by this time no less than 4 attacks have been repelled by the combined Grayson and Manticore navy task forces stationed there. The RMN promoted her posthumously, or so they thought) Honor Harrington and a small fleet of captured ships arrive from the Hades System

1914 PD - Manpower Incident takes place on Old Terra, Earth is what they are talking about in case it wasn't clear and yes there is a planet named new terra. (I think) A failed military coup, for real this time, resulted in the destruction of the Octagon, the military HQ on the planet Haven, and the death of all the remaining committee members and those who staged the coup including its leader Esther McQueen, she was the Secretary of War at the time. Only the Secretary of Security, the leader of the State Security forces, Oscar Saint Just survived

1915 PD – Oscar Saint Just transmits a request for truce and peace talks to the new Manticore civilian government, the High Ridge government, following the assassination of the manticoran prime minister and attempted assassination of the manticoran queen, this resulted in a change of government as the old political parties no longer had the majority required by manticoran law to form a government, by 'Masadan' terrorists who were in fact supplied by state sec. led by Oscar Saint Just.

1916 PD – Fearing a new round of purges and such, Fleet Admiral Thomas Theisman successfully led a military coup lead by from his position within Haven Home Fleet killing Oscar personally, he immediately afterwords put in place a Presidential Cabinet led by Esther Pritchart in the style of the old Haven Constitution. He refused the office of the president for himself and instead took a seat as the new secretary of war. (my god people eh? lol)

1916-1919 - Thomas Theisman and the restored Republic of Haven Navy conduct a three year campaign to secure the reborn Republic of Haven from Office of State Security holdouts.

1919 PD - The Mesan slave world Verdant Vista, in the Congo System, is liberated to become the Kingdom of Torch. Also during this time a 7th transit junction is located within the manticore wormhole junction, this one leads the the lynx system in the Talbott cluster on the far side of the solarian league. This system is the closest habituated system to the area known as covenant space.

1920 PD - Deceived by the political machinations of Secretary of State Arnold Giancola, the Republic of Haven launches Operation Thunderbolt in an attempt to pressure the High Ridge-led Star Kingdom of Manticore to negoitate in good faith, starting the Second Havenite-Manticoran War.

1921 PD – The battle of manticore is fought, the first attack on the manticore home system in 800 years, the Havenite 7th Fleet fought the combined Manticoran Home Fleet , 7th and 8th fleets, the manticoran home fleet was destroyed completely and the 7th was badly damaged however with the use of a new manticoran missile type with ranges of up to 100 million kilometers which is well beyond any other navies missile ranges; Admiral Harrington, at the time in command of the manticoran 8th fleet forced the remaining forced the remaining havenite forces to surrender. This was the largest single battle of the war including a little more than 300 Superdreadnoughts and their accompanying screen on each side by the end only 120 manticoran superdreadnoughts remained and 100 havenite all were damaged to some extent.

Oct 25, 1921 PD - An unprovoked attack upon RMN units in the New Tuscany System is committed by the Solarian League Navy under the command of Admiral Josef Byng.

Nov 17, 1921 PD - SLN Frontier Fleet Task Group 3021 is disabled in the New Tuscany System by the RMN's Tenth Fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Gold Peak.

1922 PD - President Eloise Pritchart makes a suprise visit to Manticore to negotiate peace treaty. The Second Havenite-Manticoran War officially ends with a military alliance between the Star Empire of Manticore and the Republic of Haven against the Solarian League. These were a continuation of previous talks initiated by the then Star Kingdom that were ended due to a sneak attack upon the manticore system that destroyed the construction stations Haephestus and Vulcan as well as the research and development station Wayland. This attack coincided with a similar attack that destroyed similar stations in the Yeltsin Star system. At this time the exact perpetrators of the attack are unkown though it is theorized that the Mesan system is behind the attack. 5.4 million people on the stations were killed and a further 7.5 million were killed on the planet sphinx when wreckage from the Vulcan hit the city of Yawata. Additionally 9000 treecats, all from one clan, were killed outright by wreckage that hit near their home. This is the largest loss of civilian life to date, since the final battles for sol during civil war, due to military operations.

June 1922 PD Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX makes first inter-steller state visit to Manticore to sign Manticore-Haven Peace treaty on behalf of Grayson.

Feb 1922 PD - Battle of Spindle occurs, a task force of the Solarian Navy is sent to the spindle system to demand the surrender of Admiral Gold Peak and all ships and officers involved in the New Tuscany Incident. It ends in a one sided victory for the manticoran navy units there, the heaviest of which was a battlecruiser and they only had 14 of them, of the 71 SD, 24 BC, 12 CA, 23 CL, 18 DD solarian league ships only 23 SD's survived the battle. The reason for this is the many new technologies developed by manticore during its wars with haven including a Multi-Drive Missile system that was ship launched and had a range of 30 million kilometers 3 times the previous best shipboard launched missile combined with better focusing lenses for the laser heads and slight increases in the power of the warheads that formed the lasers. As well as system defence pods that had been shipped to them before the sneak attack on the manticore system.

June 1922 PD - Second Battle of Manticore - SLN Eleventh Fleet commanded by Admiral Filareta is decisively defeated by the Grand Fleet commanded by Admiral Alexander-Harrington. Grand Fleet Consisted of the Manticoran Home Fleet, The Protectors Own, a Grayson formation at the personal command of the protector (the head of state for the protectorate of Grayson) and the havenite 7th fleet.

* * *

Missile Pods - They're exactly what they sound like disposable pods that originally had 10 missiles each, the newest manticoran has 8 the newest havenite has 6 and the andermanni has 7 the solarian league navy has no pods right now. They are used to thicken a fleets missile launches initially, as they have no defences of their own and are such vulnerable to proximity soft kills. As of right now DD and CL can carry 4, CA can carry 5, BC's can carry 7 dreadnoughts, though no navies are currently making more, 10 while SD's can carry 15. (not actually sure about those numbers, might be higher) Although carry isn't quite right they use their tractor beams to 'tow' the pods behind them then turn broadside to fire them.

Off-Bore Capability - A rather new concept that allows a warship to fire both broadsides at the same target regardless of orientation, except of course throught the floor or ceiling of their impeller wedge, effectively doubling the amount of missiles one ship can send at a target.

Apollo - Another new concept introduced by the manticoran navy, apollo is essentially a missile dedicated for FTL communication between a ship and it's missiles. Before it's conception missile links were limited to light speed and pre-programmed EW and ECM measures. It also allows the extension of a missiles range into the hundreds of millions of kilometer range as you can instruct the missiles to shut down their drive as they come in, disappearing from sensors, before activating them when they get into attack range. Not all ships are capable of using this feature as it requires a rather significant upgrade to their standard sensor systems.

SD(P) - Or colloquially known as the super-podnought, was the manticoran answer to the increasing dominace of missile pods these super dreadnoughts use an internal magazine system, in addition to their already considerable broadsides to launch then fire groups of pods at a time. At this time the only navies to field this ship type are the Andermanni, Manticoran, Havenite and Grayson. Mostly due to their size and complexity of their internal automation. Though the solarian league could field these ships they have not done so yet.

CLAC's - Yet another example of manticoran ingenuity. With the use of pods now established on both sides, talkin about Haven-Manticore in case you were wonderin, another game changer was needed, this was the CLAC. Functioning much the same way as a wet navy carrier it is armed with a light broadside with an abundance of PD its primary purpose is to deliver the approx. 100 LAC's it carries to the battlefield.

**Finally there you go lol. While not exactly how i had managed it i think i did pretty well. And as to why they don't have single man fighters no impeller drive ever made would fit in a single man sized fighter or for that matter could a single man sized fighter supply the power required for it. The solarian league will be explained later lol. Ugh I will have to go into politics argh! lol ah well have a good day and good reading lol. Oh and I need more REVIEWS! lol, woops need to pay a bit more attention lol i thought i read it said 400 somewhere though it may have been talking about the speed of lac's at the time.  
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	8. The Cryobay

**I don't like to put two non-story chapters one right after the other and I finally got an idea of what exactly is in the ship with the chief and cortana so here we go lol. X-com Enemy Unkown, is a pain in the ass though the DLC's are cool and useful, I think lol anybody else? **

As they made their way through the ship avoiding holes in the floor from damage, and conducting a brief experiment on the way finding out that cortana could indeed survive in vacuum but it wasn't pleasant, her idea not his. They decided to go to the armory first to see if they could find a helmet and sidearm for her and ammo for his M5AC assault rifle. Reaching the armory they found it was still sealed and intact; the artificial gravity was out though. They located a spare ODST helmet that would work with cortana's armour and a M6D pistol for her and ammo as well as a M6 Galilean Nonlinear laser or Spartan Laser for the Chief, they also packed several weapons for quick pick up including a DMR, Battle Rifle, SRS99D Sniper Rifle, and several M9 SMG's with full ammo loads for each, 5-10 clips for each depending on round size.

Seeing the chief attach the Spartan laser (going to refer to it as this for ease) cortana chuckles to herself.

"What's with that chief don't feel safe without the big gun?" she teases

"Can never have a big enough gun, and it's better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it." He replied easily

"Ah you're such a spoilsport, always so serious." Cortana continued teasing

The chief looked at her and even through his visor she could feel his gaze, laughing lightly at him again cortana decided she would save more for later, besides they didn't really have time for their usual banter anyways, not that that had stopped her before.

"Cortana" the chief's voice broke through her reverie. He was already at the door out, whoops.

"Coming chief" she replied slightly sheepish

As they walked towards the cryo bay, the lack of artificial gravity forced them to move at a slower pace using the magnetic clamps on their boots.

"Can you tell me anything else about the readings from the bay?" the chief asked, suddenly breaking the comfortable silence that had been between them.

"No chief sorry but the cameras are out on that side of the ship I'm not certain as to when that happened" cortana replied after hesitating slightly, as if dredging out an obscure memory.

The chief Hmmd to himself, he had never liked heading into any situation blind; even less so now after everything he had gone through with the Halo's and the Ark. It took some time to work their way through the Dawn to the starboard bay. The silence was only broken by the sounds of the ship and the occasional warning from the chief or detour direction from cortana. Finally they reached the doors to the bay and surprisingly this area seemed to still have some power, perhaps the power source had been a backup generator of some sort, the information having been lost in the corrupted data. The possibility of it being something so mundane was slim but it was slightly comforting.

"Well here we are chief, how do you wanna go about it." Cortana asked her tone, though not obviously, falsely light.

"Can you open the door remotely?" he asked

"One moment… no it appears this section is completely cut off from the rest of the ship." She replied her tone confused "I have no memory of this being so before I cut myself off from the ship, it's possible the memories been corrupted or destroyed so I don't know but…" she let herself trail off, the implications were obvious to both of them. Most likely something had entered the ship and physically cut any lines into or out of the bay.

"Alright, this is how we do it, you open the door then move out of the way I will make sure it's safe, you come in only when I've cleared it." He stated firmly

"Of course" Cortana replied quickly

Although he was slightly suspicious of her quick agreement the chief moved into position on one side of the hatch with cortana on the other, with the controls to the door.

"Ready?" She asked teasingly

He just nodded and the door opened and he was off into the room scanning with his rifle up and at the ready at first he didn't recognize what he was looking at, the light was bright in here and it was shining off of various pieces of metal, then he recognized it the entire room had been replaced with a forerunner metal installation.

"Ah, reclaimer" A voice exclaimed, one that was familiar and different at the same time and he looked up to see a forerunner monitor descending towards him. Repressing the urge to fire immediately, as if the monitor had meant him harm it had already had plenty of time to do so though one could never be entirely sure with these, he kept his weapon trained on it. It was smaller, slightly, than Guilty Spark and glowed a soft purple instead of blue.

"My name is 025 – Illuminated Remembrance, I see you and your ancilla are fine now, most excellent" The monitor gushed. At its words he realized cortana had followed him in, he glanced behind him and sure enough she was there at least she had drawn the handgun and had it pointed at the monitor.

Deciding to talk with cortana later he directed his gaze at the monitor, "What are you doing here, what is your purpose?" He questioned it not really expecting a straight answer.

"I was the station monitor for Installation 00 and when you fired the partially completed replacement station for installation 04, the right choice I believe a pity about 343 but what's done is done, I was tasked with providing support for the reclaimer" Its voice was both similar to Sparks and yet different too, perhaps more feminine? "I have acquired for the reclaimer a full upgrade system capable of upgrading your current combat skin to at least a level 12, I am sorry I could not do better, as well as the micro-production facilities necessary for you to produce ammunition for your current weapons and an assortment of forerunner hardlight configurations." The monitor continued either not acknowledging the humans silence or misinterpreting it.

"How, why?" The chief questioned slightly confused

"It was decided that the reclaimer may need assistance wherever you ended and equipment you were familiar with would prove most efficient." Illuminated responded, "As for how that was the easy part, using the arks teleportation grid we transported them to your ship and put them on standby power so they would be ready whenever the reclaimer was."

Now cortana joined in, "But who ordered you to do this?" she asked her voice quiet compared to usual

"Why the Supervisor for Installation 0 of course" was illuminateds unhelpful reply

"That does not completely answer the question" This from the chief

"I'm afraid my programming limits the amount of information I can share about the Supervisor for installation 0 all I am allowed to say is that he means you no harm." Came the almost expected reply from the monitor.

"Well that's supremely unhelpful" again from cortana though this held a more normal amount of her usual snark.

"Ah, yes your ancilla, I am so glad the experiment was a success"

The chief immediately snapped into focus at that, "What do you mean experiment?" He questioned sharply.

"Why the one to allow your ancilla to gain an organic body of course."

"So you are responsible for what happened"

"No not entirely, but I did help the process"

"Is there any danger to her or me from this process"

"No, there is none, using the "dead" flood organisms that had been "killed" by their attempt to take you that was canceled we were able to direct them to do exactly what they did, if it had failed she would have simply remained in pure data form, though her bout with rampancy and later metastability left her unstable and it was safer this way to extend her lifespan."

Unsure of what exactly to make of this unexpectedly helpful monitor the chief looked at cortana, she looked thoughtful and when she realized he was watching her just shrugged.

"Thank you, I guess" The words came out of his mouth grudgingly fighting every inch of the way.

"Of course reclaimer" Illuminated replied apparently unfazed

Remembering the equipment now available to him the cortana asked "When can we start on the upgrades and production?" while the chief was thinking the implications of what the Monitor said.

"Anytime ancilla but you may wish to wait until after we have landed upon the planet this ship is currently approaching." Was the polite reply

"Do you have any way to make sure the ship lands safely on the planet's surface?" was her next question.

"Yes, ancilla, the reclaimers needs to but ask"

"Why does he have to?" snark heavily apparent "And why do you keep calling me ancilla?"

"I have been tasked to only follow his orders unless otherwise ordered by him or the Supervisor" came the blithe reply "And it is the proper mode of address for AI's tasked to a specific person."

Hmph came from cortana as she crossed her arms across her chest. John was amused by this and snorted lightly within his helmet, as if she heard this cortana shifted her glare to him and her body language practically shouted, you think this is funny? He shifted to look at her more fully his own stance showing absolutely nothing and was telling for exactly that with another huff cortana walked over to him and asked, "So are you gonna get him to do something or what?"

"Of course" was all he said to her as he walked towards the monitor once again, "Illuminated Remberance get this ship to the surface of the planet in one piece" he ordered.

"At once reclaimer, do you have a preference for when or where?"

"Somewhere we can easily hide the ship from any casual observation and as soon as is practicable"

"Very well though this course of action will require using the sentinels (of course there are some) holding the containment field to move the ship."

"Is there any chance of something going wrong?"

"Very little to none, in fact I calculate an only 1% chance of any sort of failure"

"Then do so." He confirmed, "Is there anything I should know now about the people held in stasis?"

"Not in particular reclaimer, just don't be surprised by who is there and they may suffer from some disorientation" the monitor stated then immediately flew away followed by a half dozen slightly oversized sentinels that seemed to lack the laser of the sentinels he was familiar with. Now what did he mean by that the chief thought as he turned back towards the room.

* * *

Small arms – The hand weaponry of the Post Diaspora era, as it is commonly known as, revolve mostly around pulsers which are in essence grav guns, using a miniature grav coil they propel relatively small slugs, on average 4mm, at extremely high speeds. The most common military rounds would technically be classified SAPHE, semi-armour piercing high explosive, though regular solid shot is also available and usually used against soft targets (unarmoured in other words). There is also both laser and plasma weaponry available but they are classified as heavy weapons and are usually used only in situations where the opposition is expected to be numerous or in battle armour. Yes they have commonly used and relatively cheap powered armour but that is for another time.

**This seemed like a good place to end this chapter lol, I feel evil muahahaha. Ah well another chapter coming soon. It has occurred to me that I may have lied about slow updates lol. Normally I don't write very quickly but it's been slow at work and I've had a lot of time to think so this is coming along quite quickly and nicely if i do say so myself lol. I reread this chapter later and decided to go in a different direction, I like this one better, tell me what you think. Your Reviews I Crave them lol.**


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